Hemant Mohapatra
investing @lightspeedindia, past: VC @a16z, product-BD @Google, engg @AMD; investor @supabase @pixxelspace @gorattle @hubiloconnect @solana @pintuID & more
10+ Book Recommendations by Hemant Mohapatra
Competing in the Age of AI
Marco Iansiti
@iamsganguly https://t.co/ji22QOFIES
Liftoff
Eric Berger
The dramatic inside story of the first four historic flights that launched SpaceX--and Elon Musk--from a shaky startup into the world's leading edge rocket company. In 2006, SpaceX--a brand-new venture with fewer than 200 employees--rolled its first, single-engine rocket onto a launch pad at Kwajalein Atoll. After a groundbreaking launch from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the Falcon 1 rocket designed by Elon Musk's engineers rose in the air for approximately thirty seconds. Then, its engine flamed out, and the rocket crashed back into the ocean. In 2007, SpaceX undertook a second launch. This time, the rocket rose far into space, but just before reaching orbit it spun out of control. Confident of success in 2008, Musk and his team launched their third rocket with several paying customers. The first stage executed perfectly, but instead of falling away, it thudded into the second stage. Another failure. Elon Musk had only budgeted for three attempts when he founded SpaceX. Out of money and with a single Falcon 1 rocket left in its factory, SpaceX decided to try one last, dramatic launch. Over eight weeks, engineers worked furiously to prepare this final rocket. The fate of Musk's venture mirrored the trajectory of this slender, single-engine rocket aimed toward the skies. If it crashed and burned, so would SpaceX. In September 2008, SpaceX's last chance for success lifted off . . . and accelerated like a dream, soaring into orbit flawlessly. That success would launch a miraculous decade for the company, in which SpaceX grew from building a single-engine rocket to one with a staggering 27 engines; created two different spacecraft, and mastered reusable-rocket descents using mobile drone ships on the open seas. It marked a level of production and achievement that has not been seen since the space race of the 1960s. But these achievements would not have been possible without SpaceX's first four flight tests. Drawing on unparalleled access and exclusive interviews with dozens of former and current employees--engineers, designers, mechanics, and executives, including Elon Musk--Eric Berger tells the complete story of this foundational generation that transformed SpaceX into the world's leading space company. Liftoff includes more than a dozen photographs.What a book by @SciGuySpace! Probably going to be an HBO movie soon. https://t.co/ByAGBLh79g
Devil Take the Hindmost
Edward Chancellor
Examines stock market speculation since the seventeenth century, discussing the range of motivations of investors and the effects on economies throughout history.Reco reading for the long weekend. Both works are intricately related. Speculation drives debt drives speculation. The former is an imp work in the context of crypto which gets a bad rap as v speculation driven. Turns out propensity to trade & speculate are as old as civilisation https://t.co/CT07jGlpPc
Debt
David Graeber
Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. --Reco reading for the long weekend. Both works are intricately related. Speculation drives debt drives speculation. The former is an imp work in the context of crypto which gets a bad rap as v speculation driven. Turns out propensity to trade & speculate are as old as civilisation https://t.co/CT07jGlpPc
Sapiens Graphic Novel 01
Yuval Noah Harari
Quite liking the fact that @harari_yuval's graphic novel version of Sapiens has a wise old grandma who explains the complicated stuff to you 'like you would to your grandma' , and her name is Saraswati - the Indian goddess of knowledge. Enjoying this fresh take on the book! https://t.co/bPvpimOOU7
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz
A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one. In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, draws on his own story of founding, running, selling, buying, managing, and investing in technology companies to offer essential advice and practical wisdom for navigating the toughest problems business schools don't cover. His blog has garnered a devoted following of millions of readers who have come to rely on him to help them run their businesses. A lifelong rap fan, Horowitz amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs and tells it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in. His advice is grounded in anecdotes from his own hard-earned rise—from cofounding the early cloud service provider Loudcloud to building the phenomenally successful Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, both with fellow tech superstar Marc Andreessen (inventor of Mosaic, the Internet's first popular Web browser). This is no polished victory lap; he analyzes issues with no easy answers through his trials, including demoting (or firing) a loyal friend; whether you should incorporate titles and promotions, and how to handle them; if it's OK to hire people from your friend's company; how to manage your own psychology, while the whole company is relying on you; what to do when smart people are bad employees; why Andreessen Horowitz prefers founder CEOs, and how to become one; whether you should sell your company, and how to do it. Filled with Horowitz's trademark humor and straight talk, and drawing from his personal and often humbling experiences, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures.I read @bhorowitz 's Hard Thing right before joining the team and it is still one of the most real, no BS take on a founder's journey I've ever read. Pre-ordering this right away! The@a16z lobby bookshelf will soon have space enough just for books by a16z folks! https://t.co/zBglLiXSo0
Bad Blood
John Carreyrou
The Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post Notable Book One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Time, Esquire, Fortune, Marie Claire, GQ, Mental Floss, Science Friday, Bloomberg, Popular Mechanics, BookRiot, The Seattle Times, The Oregonian, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings--from journalists to their own employees. Rigorously reported and fearlessly written, Bad Blood is a gripping story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron--a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.Just finished Bad Blood by @JohnCarreyrou - felt so close to the story as I (1) shared floor w/ someone @Google a whole chapter was dedicated to (2) had xchanged emails w/ Sunny asking to meet (he declined) & (3) had strongly recommended theranos to a friend who almost joined! 😲 https://t.co/rqR34HZP7Z
The Time Machine
H.G. Wells
Just finished the @3BodyTrilogy and loved it - what an epic journey. The first sci-fi book I read was an illustrated version of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. The impact a mind bending idea like that had on an 8yo was incredible. Nothing expands your mind better than sci-fi! https://t.co/1zSXEGmIGs
Tubes
Andrew Blum
Criticism 3: networking is nowhere near as expensive. Wrong. Google spent 300M on an undersea cable. Large cos pay shit ton in secret handshakes with telcos. My favorite book on this recommended by @sunubunu who built AWS and Google interconnects: https://t.co/M6H5dW32OG
High Growth Handbook
Elad Gil
Well known technology executive and angel investor Elad Gil has worked with high growth tech companies like Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Instacart, Coinbase, Stripe, and Square as they've grown from small companies into global brands. Across all of these break-out companies, a set of common patterns has evolved into a repeatable playbook that Gil has codified in High Growth Handbook. Covering key topics including the role of the CEO, managing your board, recruiting and managing an executive team, M&A, IPOs and late stage funding rounds, and interspersed with over a dozen interviews with some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz), and Aaron Levie (Box), High Growth Handbook presents crystal clear guidance for navigating the most complex challenges that confront leaders and operators in high-growth startups. In what Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn and co-author of the #1 NYT bestsellers The Alliance and The Startup of You calls "a trenchant guide," High Growth Handbook is the playbook for turning a startup into a unicorn.Just got the book by @eladgil after hearing this, as usual awesome, podcast by @a16z 's @cdixon. Highly recommend! https://t.co/cV84XYkrVb
A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking
An anniversary edition of a now-classic survey of the origin and nature of the universe features a new introduction by the author and a new chapter on the possibility of time travel and "wormholes" in spaceThe world just got a lot dumber. Dr. Stephen Hawking passed away. I read "a brief history of time" when I was about 14 and it is one of the 2-3 books about science I read at that early age that changed the course of my life. Perha…https://t.co/fWLVoXZX3X https://t.co/qQcF7A2TP8